Tober said:
I'm not German, I'm your friendly western neighbor. I don't know much about AfD, but why are they considered rightwing? The Nazi's where socialist (it's in the name). Are AfD hardcore capitalist? |
Nazism was an arch-enemy of comunism. Comunist party was the first one to be prosecuted and outlawed during Nazi German ascension
To give a bit more the nuance of why the Nazi called themselves socialists, it has two major reasons
The first is because socialism back them could be understood as an opposition to classical liberalism (laissez faire) which was rampant after industrial revolution, it created wealth while most workers still live in poverty. So there was a call to redistribution of the newly created wealthy. In this sense anyone who was against classical liberalism could call themselves as socialists
Second, socialist (not necessarily Marxism) was really popular in Germany before Hitler ascension. The inclusion of socialism in the name of the party was to gather the sympathy of the worker class
While the nazi German was not classical capitalist, it's hard to classify it as a socialist eithet. Remember having a coletivist economy planned, centralized and organized by the state alone does not turn a nation socialist (at least in the historographical version of socialism derivated from Marxism, people in this thread thinks healthcare = socialism lol)
If being state-controlled is what it takes to be socialist, then absolutist monarchies would also be socialist. Look at Saudi Arabia
